Guillemard camp to be converted into facility for recovering Covid-19 patients

The aim is to have 10,000 beds available for such a purpose by the end of June.

Matthias Ang | April 28, 2020, 06:38 PM

Guillemard camp will be converted into a Community Recovery Facility (CRF) for recovering Covid-19 patients.

This means that Covid-19 patients who remain well on day 14 of their illness and do not require further medical care will be isolated at such a location as they recover, before being assessed for discharge, Brigadier-General David Neo of the SAF announced at a press conference on Apr. 28.

Neo added that currently, there were about 2,000 available bed spaces in SAF and the aim was to build up to more than 10,000 bed spaces by the end of June.

Why use day 14 as a marker?

With regard to why day 14 was used as a marker, Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong stated that patients who remained well on day 14 were likely to remain stable and generally did not need medical care.

As such, such patients did not need to remain at Community Care Facilities (CCFs) and could be transferred to a CRF, which does not need to have medical services.

Army camps will now accommodate both healthy and recovering workers

The latest news means that army camps will now accommodate both healthy and workers who remain well on day 14 of their illness.

Previously on Apr, 9, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong announced that healthy foreign workers would be housed at numerous empty premises such as SAF camps, HDB blocks, floating hotels and Changi Exhibition Centre.

The same day also saw a Facebook post by Pioneer, an entity under SAFRA, showing foreign workers moving into a few SAF camps.

Health migrant workers are being housed at Jurong Camp II and Bedok Camp II

The post stated that around 1,300 foreign workers had moved into vacant premises at Jurong Camp II and Bedok Camp II under the instruction of the Ministry of National Development.

As such, stringent precautionary measures have been put in place at the camps.

Workers are required to register and undergo medical checks before moving into their accommodation.

Safe distancing measures, such as meals at staggered timings, and daily temperature checks twice day have also been implemented, among other things.

Top image screenshot from Google Streetview